


i am your savior, your last serving daughter

by windupclock



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, don't mind me making up backstory for suki because canon never gave her one, kyoshi is so proud of suki, references to the kyoshi novels canon (aka spoilers), very brief but nonetheless
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-30
Updated: 2020-09-30
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:34:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26732947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/windupclock/pseuds/windupclock
Summary: Suki meets Kyoshi.
Relationships: Kyoshi & Suki (Avatar), Sokka/Suki (Avatar)
Comments: 24
Kudos: 163





	i am your savior, your last serving daughter

**Author's Note:**

> title is from hope in the air by laura marling!

With a delicate flick of her wrist, Suki applies the last of her makeup in a sweep of red down her nose. She turns her face this way and that, examining her work for any imperfections, and finds none. She smiles.

“You know, if you were a couple feet taller, you’d be a dead ringer for Kyoshi herself,” Sokka says.

“What do you mean, a couple feet taller?” Suki asks with a frown, turning to glare at him. “I’m not short! I’m a very respectable height!”

“Of course you are,” Sokka says soothingly, covering her hand with his. “But Kyoshi was, like, a mountain of a woman, babe. I barely came up to her chest.”

Suki drops her brush. “What?”

“When she showed up on Avatar Day?” Sokka squints at her. “Did we not tell you about that? She, like, manifested in Aang’s body and told us about how she wrecked Chin the Conqueror’s shit.”

“What?” Suki nearly shrieks. “You met Kyoshi and you didn’t tell me?”

Sokka avoids her eyes. “Um.”

“I  _ hate  _ you,” Suki says fervently. “I’m breaking up with you right now.”

“Don’t do that,” Sokka says, pouting. “I was busy, okay? I forgot!”

Suki rolls her eyes. “You  _ forgot_. To tell me that you met Kyoshi. The woman my home and the warriors I lead are named after. The woman I look up to more than anything else. It just slipped your mind?”

“Middle of a war,” Sokka reminds her. “Didn’t see you for months.”

“Fine,” Suki acquiesces with a sigh. “Maybe I can forgive you. Eventually. As long as you tell me more.”

“Gladly.” Sokka grins. “Well, Aang kind of got put on trial for a murder they accused Kyoshi of, and we were trying to exonerate him, and Katara thought that maybe wearing Kyoshi’s stuff might help Aang remember. It didn’t work at first, but then there was this tornado, and—bam. Giant spirit woman summoned.”

“What did she do? What did she  _ say_?”

“Well, she admitted to the murder,” Sokka says. “I mean, it was totally justified—he was a conqueror. It was literally in his name; I don’t know what they expected. She told us about how she split Kyoshi Island from the mainland so it would be protected from invaders like Chin, and then she dipped.”

“Wow,” Suki says slowly. “That’s—that’s incredible. Aang can  _ do _ that?”

Sokka shrugs. “He’s done it a couple times, I think. The other times it was Roku.” He makes a face indicating exactly what he thinks of that. “Kyoshi’s way cooler.”

“Duh,” Suki says, sticking out her tongue. “Kyoshi  _ ruled_.”

“She kind of did.”

“I knew Kyoshi’s name before I knew my own,” Suki says, her voice softer. “My mother was a warrior too. I was drawn to the statue of Kyoshi as soon as I could walk.” A smile spreads across her face. “She couldn’t keep me away. She tried so hard, but nothing would stop me from reaching Kyoshi.”

“That’s my girl,” Sokka says, grinning. “Stubborn to a fault.”

Suki playfully punches him in the shoulder. “I was a baby! Of course I was stubborn!”

“Excuses, excuses.”

“Kyoshi was… she was the hero from my stories, you know? She was everything I wanted to be.” Suki takes a deep breath. “You know how… my father, he wasn’t…”

Sokka takes her hand and squeezes it, giving her support. “I know,” he says gently.

“He wasn’t there most of the time,” Suki says. “He would disappear for weeks, months, even a year once—I was glad when he was gone, because it meant my mother cried less and smiled more, and she didn’t have bruises. I didn’t understand it then. I thought it was normal.” She shakes her head. “Then he came back when I was eight, and he tried—he took it out on me for the first time, and my mom lost it. She wouldn’t stand up for herself, but for my sake… I never saw him again, after that. I don’t know if she chased him off or killed him—I don’t care.”

“I hope she killed him,” Sokka mutters. Suki huffs a quiet laugh of agreement.

“My mom had always been my hero, but seeing her like that… I begged her to teach me how to fight. She said yes.” She looks down at her hands. “Half a year later, she was dead. Disease. Almost everyone on the island caught it. Most of us got better. She didn’t.”

“I’m so sorry,” Sokka says softly. “You were so young.”

Suki nods. “After that, I threw everything into my training. I had to keep up her legacy. The statue of Kyoshi… it reminded me of her, when she was in her uniform, you know? I started—I’d talk to her, sometimes. Kyoshi, not Mom. Ask her for guidance and blessings. Tell her about my days.” She shrugs, a little embarrassed. “Sometimes I’d dream about her, and she’d… she’d say she was proud of me.”

“She would be,” Sokka says fiercely, as a plan starts to take shape in his head. “To see how amazing you are? How well you lead the warriors? She’d love you.”

Suki smiles softly at him. “I like to think so.” 

* * *

“Come on,” Sokka says, tugging impatiently on Suki’s hand. “Walk faster!”

Suki giggles but speeds up her pace accordingly. “This had better be a good surprise if you’re making me jog,” she teases.

“It will be,” Sokka promises. When they reach the door at the end of the hall, he throws it open triumphantly and pushes Suki inside. “You can thank me later,” he says, closing the door behind her.

Suki blinks at the closed door, then shrugs and turns, a frown settling into place as she does.

Aang is standing in the center of the room, wearing clothes that dwarf him to an almost comical degree, and— _are those Kyoshi’s clothes?_ “What’s going on?” Suki demands. “Where did you get those?”

“Oyaji let me borrow them!” Aang says brightly. “This isn’t the surprise, though. Just give me a second, okay? I’ll see you later.”

With that baffling statement, Aang shuts his eyes. Suki stumbles back, staring wide-eyed as dust flies up from the floor and forms a tornado around him, whirling faster and faster until Aang is completely obscured behind the clouds of dust. For a moment, Suki wonders how in the four nations Sokka possibly thought this would be a surprise she would enjoy, and then—

Then the dust clears, and Aang is gone.

In his place is a spirit. A woman who fits the clothes perfectly.

Suki sinks to her knees on instinct and bows as low as she can, letting her forehead brush the ground before she pushes herself back up to kneel. “Avatar Kyoshi,” she says, the words heavy on her tongue. “It is an honor to meet you.”

“The honor is all mine,” Kyoshi says. Her voice is as steady as the earth, and her face is almost crushingly familiar—it’s the face on the statue Suki has looked up towards her entire life; it’s the face she sees sometimes when she looks in the mirror—until she tilts her head, wipes a hand across her face, and the makeup disappears.

Bare-faced, maskless, Avatar Kyoshi is barely recognizable—she’s gorgeous, that’s for sure, but she looks startlingly normal. Human. She looks closer to thirty than two hundred and thirty, and there are freckles scattered across her cheeks and nose, and her lips quirk as she smiles at Suki. “Not what you were expecting?”

“I didn’t—I’ve never seen, without—” Suki stammers.

Kyoshi’s grin broadens, dimples popping out in her cheeks. “Most people these days haven’t. My wife would be furious that nobody knows I had freckles.” She chuckles and shakes her head. “But that’s not what you called me here to talk about, is it, Suki?”

Suki pauses—her name on Kyoshi’s tongue, Kyoshi _knows her name_ —and then shakes her head. “Truth be told, _I _ didn’t really call you here. It was my boyfriend’s idea. He, uh… he met you a while back, when you manifested in the village of Chin, and he knows… he knows how much you mean to me.”

Kyoshi closes her eyes for a brief moment. “You have no idea what it means to hear you say that,” she says quietly. “I have watched you since I first heard you call my name. Your strength, your courage… it is a privilege to witness someone so young shining so brightly.”

Suki feels her cheeks heat, and she shakes her head again. “I’m nothing special.”

“Don’t say that.” There’s an unexpectedly fierce note in Kyoshi’s tone, and Suki startles. “You are incredible, my child. To count someone like you as part of my legacy, to know that I have had some part in who you are—it is an honor.”

_ My child. _Suki wants to cry. “Thank you,” she says softly.

“I’m curious,” Kyoshi says. “What do they teach about me these days? Do you know how my Avatarhood started?”

Suki frowns. “Not really,” she admits. “We learned about your life, of course, but I don’t remember any stories from that early on.”

Kyoshi laughs. “That figures. I can see why they’d want to keep that part out of the history books; it doesn’t exactly fit my image.” She leans closer, pitching her voice a little conspiratorial. “Do you want a history lesson?”

Suki nods eagerly.

“Great.” Kyoshi settles back and takes a deep breath. “Do you know about Kelsang?”

“Your father, right?”

“In everything but blood.” Kyoshi smiles faintly at the thought of him. “He was an Air Nomad. He adopted me when I was seven. Before then, I was a street rat. My parents dumped me in Yokoya when I was a baby. They were daofei—” She frowns. “Do you still have that word?” Suki shakes her head. “I don’t know what you would call them. Bandits, maybe? Not high society, at any rate. They lived on the run, and I was dead weight. I probably would’ve died if it weren’t for Kelsang taking me in and making me a servant in the Avatar’s mansion.”

“You were—what?”

“That’s right. The books all say Kuruk was the Avatar before me, and they’re right, but until I was sixteen, that wasn’t the case. I grew up in the era of Avatar Yun.”

“How—”

“He wasn’t really the Avatar,” Kyoshi says, words stained with old grief. “Just an unlucky earthbender. The world needed an Avatar, you see, and he was good at it. Always the perfect diplomat. Until he—until it turned out he wasn’t, and what the world got instead was me.” 

“But you’re… you’re  _ Kyoshi_,” Suki says despite herself. “You’re incredible.”

“I wasn’t always,” Kyoshi says simply. “I had no idea what I was doing at first. Yun was always… careful, precise. I was the opposite, a blunt force instrument. It didn’t help that I had no training, in diplomacy  _ or  _ bending. I was a street rat. A servant. I didn’t know how to be the Avatar. My first bending teachers were daofei who taught me on the run. That paint you wear? That was the mark of the Flying Opera Company. I started wearing it on missions.”

“You were a daofei?”

Kyoshi nods. “Until the day I died. Not… actively, not for a long time, but I said the oaths. You can’t take those back.” She shakes her head. “I had a bit of an inferiority complex for… a long time. It wasn’t that long out from the Era of Yangchen, and hers wasn’t an easy shadow to live in. Everyone  _ loved  _ Yangchen. They still sent her blessings, years after she was gone. How was I supposed to live up to that?”

Suki lets out a quiet laugh. “Sometimes… sometimes that’s how I felt about you,” she admits. “I used to want to  _ be _ you, when I was little. I thought—I thought that if only I were stronger, if only I were more like you, then I could keep everyone safe.”

“You were a child,” Kyoshi tells her, a gentle reprimand. “You had too many burdens to carry as it was. No one person can hold everything together.”

“I always thought you could.”

Kyoshi chuckles. “I gave it my best shot, and I nearly killed myself in the process. No one is perfect, Suki. Not Yangchen, and certainly not me. You can’t demand perfection of yourself. All you can ask is that you keep going when you fail.”

“I try,” Suki whispers. “But—it’s hard. Sometimes I worry that I’m letting everyone down.”

“I know how that feels,” Kyoshi tells her. “When I first came into my Avatarhood, I felt like an embarrassment. I didn’t think I would ever be good enough. I didn’t think anyone would remember me fondly, let alone  _ celebrate  _ me.”

“How? How did you not  _ know_?”

“I did figure it out eventually,” Kyoshi says with a crooked smile. “A few decades in, it started to sink in that maybe I was making a difference instead of just stumbling through mistake after mistake. You were what I was proudest of, did you know that? My warriors.”

Tears sting Suki’s eyes, and she hurriedly wipes them away. Kyoshi gives her a kind smile. 

“I never expected it to become what it was. I wanted Kyoshi Island to be… safe. Protected. I wanted the women there to know how to protect themselves, instead of depending on an Avatar to keep them safe.” She laughs softly. “I didn’t expect them to teach their children, or for their children to teach children of their own, or for anyone to put up statues of me.”

“We can take them down if you’d prefer,” Suki says, a little sly. Kyoshi snorts. 

“Don’t you  _ dare_.”

“We would never,” Suki says, shaking her head. “You mean too much to us. To the world.”

“Thank you, my child,” Kyoshi says. “I… I’m afraid my time here is drawing to an end. I’m sure your friend would like his body back.”

Suki nods, dipping her head. “Of course.”

“Come here,” Kyoshi says, opening her arms wide. Suki feels her mouth drop open, and Kyoshi smiles, gesturing her closer. She hesitantly moves closer, and Kyoshi wraps strong arms around her, letting Suki bury her face in her neck. “I am so proud of you,” Kyoshi whispers. Suki pulls back, and Kyoshi presses a kiss to her forehead. “Remember I am with you, always.”

“I won’t forget,” Suki whispers back. There’s a flash of light, and wind whips around her, blowing her hair back, but she isn’t afraid. When she opens her eyes again, Kyoshi is gone, and Aang is slumped on the ground in front of her.

Suki clasps a hand to her chest, feeling the afterimage of Kyoshi’s lips against her forehead. “Thank you,” she whispers. A stray breeze flutters by and ruffles her hair one last time.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! feel free to talk to me about avatar and/or send me writing requests or prompts at gays4korra.tumblr.com <3


End file.
